Black Bart
Brigade

An Overview

Black Bart Brigade, named
for a California outlaw of the 19th Century who staged a middle-aged
personal rebellion against the System of his day, was a
counter-culture 'sporadical' of the early 1970s. Intended as a
rallying point for those who felt left out (on a generational basis)
of the youthful ferment then underway, it had a modest success. But
it had significantly greater success as my own vehicle of change, on
many levels.

As a writer's outlet,
it provided me the perfect platform for having my say, in the
turbulence of those years;

As a communicative
medium, it put me in touch with hundreds of like-minded souls
around the country;

As a source of some
income (sporadic and insubstantial though it was), it 'stepped
me down' from the addictive habituation of a substantial weekly
paycheck;

As a clarion of new, more
wholesome ethics, in business as well as personal life, it
challenged me to live my professed beliefs, and it actually showed
me ways of doing so!

As a public personal
journal, it kept me honestly focused on changes within that
were taking me through fresh, unexplored territories of reality
perception, related to my own spiritual evolvement.

Of Black Bart Brigade,
there were only seven issues. But together with its phoenix-like
offshoots -- the briefly intermediary Yin Times of Black Bart,
and the long-trailing mimeographed series mainly called Black
Bart, there were 19 issues in all (though variously numbered, as
well as named), over a 13-year span (1971-1984). That a readership of
some 400 stayed largely constant, for most of those years -- and many
of them remain, today, on the Ripening Seasons mailing list --
is an effective commentary on the quality and appeal of what came out
under this rubric.

I subtitled it an "Outlaw
Mag[azine]" and it was that in every sense: I pirated freely
from other publications when something worthwhile turned up (always
giving credit, however), I obtained no licenses, permits or
accreditation, filed no tax returns, and observed no library or
subscription house formalities -- which is to say, I did not seek
their patronage or their assist. Some patronized me anyway, but on
my terms, not the other way around. My mailings went out under
a borrowed postal permit, and my bank account was never backed by any
formal DBA papers ("Doing business as...").

I'm not at all sure one could get
away with such 'in your face' independence today, but my position
through the thick of it was that Black Bart was neither a
business nor a profit-making venture, offering its product entirely
on a free donation basis, with no other source of income through it.
No books were ever kept that could show otherwise. (No account books
of any sort were kept, beyond the first six months that it
took me to realize the worrisome idiocy of shifting numbers around on
paper, in a one-man operation!)

What you'll find, here, is a
representative sampling from each issue -- mainly (but not entirely)
consisting of my own writing. Each separate issue opens, here, with a
few words noting the circumstances around that particular workup, to
provide a context: the issue's focus, where it was put together (my
residence shifted continually, though the publication address
remained the same), and what was going on in my world at the time --
mostly with respect to the issue at hand.